LA curfew to continue for ‘couple more days'
Bass issued an overnight curfew on June 10 on the downtown area at the heart of the protests to stop incidents of vandalism and looting. On Sunday she said she is hoping that the number of people behind the violent incidents "will taper off". "So I know the curfew will be on for at least a couple more days," she said in a televised interview with local news channel KTLA, adding that she cannot predict how many more days exactly. "We don't know how many raids are going to happen, we don't know what the character of the raids will be, and every time that happens it really generates a lot of anger in the city," she said. — AFP
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Observer
24 minutes ago
- Observer
Gazans suffer as Israeli brutal fire intensifies
GAZA: Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli attacks killed at least 22 people on Saturday, warning that intensifying strikes on a Gaza City neighbourhood were placing its remaining residents in mortal danger. Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said conditions in the Zeitun neighbourhood were rapidly deteriorating with residents having little to no access to food and water amid heavy Israeli bombardment. He said that about 50,000 people are estimated to be in that area of Gaza City, "the majority of whom are without food or water" and lacking "the basic necessities of life". Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties accessing swaths of the Palestinian territory mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defence agency, the Israeli military and other sources. In recent days, Gaza City residents have said that of more frequent air strikes targeting residential areas, including in Zeitun, while earlier this week Palestinian group Hamas denounced "aggressive" Israeli ground incursions. To Bassal, Israel was carrying out "ethnic cleansing" in Zeitun. Israeli officials have dismissed similar accusations before, and the military insists it abides by international law. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet approved plans to seize Gaza City, one of the most densely populated parts of the territory, which has been devastated by more than 22 months of war. On Friday, the Israeli military said its troops were operating in Zeitun. Ghassan Kashko, 40, who shelters with his family at a school building in the neighbourhood, said: "We don't know the taste of sleep." He said air strikes and tank shelling were causing "explosions... that don't stop". The Israeli plan to expand the war has sparked an international outcry as well as domestic opposition. UN-backed experts have warned of widespread famine unfolding in the territory, where Israel has drastically curtailed the amount of humanitarian aid it allows in. According to the civil defence agency, at least 13 of the Palestinians killed on Saturday were shot by troops as they were waiting to collect food aid near distribution sites in the north and in the south. The war was triggered by the October 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, based on official figures. Israel's offensive has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to figures from the health ministry in Gaza, which the United Nations considers reliable. Meanwhile, a young Palestinian woman who was flown from Gaza to an Italian hospital in a severely emaciated state for treatment has died, the hospital said on Saturday. The 20-year-old, identified by Italian media reports as Marah Abu Zuhri, arrived in Pisa on an Italian government humanitarian flight overnight Wednesday-Thursday. The University Hospital of Pisa said she had a "very complex clinical picture" and serious wasting, which is when a person has significant weight and muscle loss. On Friday, after undergoing tests and starting treatment, she died after a sudden respiratory crisis and cardiac arrest, the hospital said. The woman was flown to Italy with her mother on one of three Italian air force flights that arrived this week in Rome, Milan and Pisa, carrying a total of 31 patients and their companions. All the patients suffered from serious congenital diseases, wounds or amputations, the Italian foreign ministry said at the time. So far, more than 180 children and young people from Gaza have been brought to Italy since the war began. The head of the Tuscany region, Eugenio Giani, offered his condolences to the woman's family. The hospital did not elaborate on what caused her condition, but Italian news agencies reported that she was suffering from severe malnutrition. Humanitarian groups, UN agencies and the Palestinian group Hamas have warned of the risk of widespread famine in war-battered Gaza. — AFP
Observer
7 hours ago
- Observer
Why Russia sold Alaska to the US
President Vladimir Putin of Russia was scheduled to meet with President Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday to discuss the war in Ukraine. If they talk about Ukrainian land concessions as part of peace negotiations, as Trump has suggested, they will be doing so on land that Russia sold to the United States in 1867. That won't be the only historical irony. Russia was moved to sell Alaska partly because of a war in Crimea, a peninsula that the Russian Empire annexed in 1783 under Catherine the Great. Crimea became part of an independent Ukraine in 1991, and Russia seized it in 2014 in a preview of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As ironies go, 'it doesn't get much better than that on a grand historical scale,' said Pierce Bateman, a historian at the University of Alaska Anchorage, referring to the location of the Trump-Putin summit. The $7.2 million purchase of Alaska now looks like a very good deal for the United States. Though it made sense for the Russian Empire at the time, some Russian nationalists see the sale as a historic blunder. Here's what to know about the forces and people that shaped it, and why its legacy matters: Russia acquired Alaska during an era of colonial expansion. Russian explorers reached present-day Alaska in the 18th century by crossing a narrow strait separating Asia and North America. The strait was named after Vitus Bering, the Danish-born mariner sent abroad by Czar Peter the Great in the 1720s to claim new Russian territory. Bateman said there was a 'wild west' feeling in the territory as early Russian explorers rushed to harvest sea otter furs — a prized commodity in China at the time — in and around the Aleutian Islands. There was also brutality against Indigenous people, including abductions of the children of local leaders and the destruction of boats and hunting equipment, according to William L. Iggiagruk Hensley, a historian and former Democratic state senator in Alaska. Alaska's economic appeal for Russia faded over time. In 1799, the Russian Empire chartered the Russian-American Company to streamline the fur trade and formalize Russian settlements in the territory that would become known as Alaska. 'Russian America' would eventually stretch as far south as California. But overharvesting was making the fur trade far less profitable. There were also tensions among Russian, British and American fur traders, partly because the limits of their territories and hunting grounds were not well defined. And Russia's sparsely populated settlements and assets were poorly defended. Geopolitics were a factor in the sale. The challenges of holding Alaska were complicated by developments on other continents. One was trade: Russia increasingly wanted to focus on imperial expansion in its Far East. Another was war. When Russia began fighting Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire in Crimea in 1853, Russian officials worried that British forces might try to invade the Russian Far East through North America, according to a 2016 book about the purchase of Alaska by historian Lee Farrow. Even after that threat subsided, they continued to worry about the British presence in the Pacific. They also wondered if 'Russian America' would survive U.S. expansionism. By the 1850s, the United States had acquired California, annexed Texas, and fought a war with Mexico. There was talk of 'Manifest Destiny,' the idea that the United States was destined to expand across North America. Russian officials, including the commander of its Pacific fleet, urged the ailing empire to offload Alaska while it could. The deal made sense for both sides. The diplomatic conditions for a sale were good, according to Farrow, a professor at Auburn University at Montgomery. Trade between Russia and the United States was blossoming, and both were increasingly distrustful of Britain, America's former colonial master. In March 1867, Secretary of State William Henry Seward opened the negotiations by offering $5 million for the territory to Eduard Stoeckl, the Russian minister to the United States. Two weeks later, they agreed on $7.2 million, or less than 2 cents an acre. A treaty was signed in Seward's office at 4 a.m. after an all-night negotiating session, and later approved by Congress and Czar Alexander II. The deal led to some tension and scandal: The U.S. government was late to pay Russia, and there were accusations that American politicians and journalists had taken cuts of the payment as bribes. Some critics did not see the strategic advantage of adding a frozen territory more than twice the size of France, and called the purchase 'Seward's folly.' But the resistance was largely driven by a minority of American newspapers, according to a 2019 study by historian Michael A. Hill. Many Americans were excited about Alaska's rumored natural resources, he wrote. Some Russians have seller's remorse. Alaska turned out to have plenty of resources, including gold, timber, and petroleum, and the purchase was increasingly seen as a good deal for the United States. Alaska became the 49th state in 1959. In Russia, there was some relief after the deal. But by the Soviet era, it was seen as an embarrassment, said Julia Davis, founder of the Russian Media Monitor, a project that tracks Kremlin propaganda. Putin, who often talks about the need to restore Russian power, equivocated in 2014 when asked if Russia planned to annex Alaska. But a sense of seller's remorse over the lost territory seems to be a feature of his rule, Davis said, and calls to take Alaska back have grown louder as relations with the United States have worsened. 'Alaska is ours' billboards popped up in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the message was amplified by some politicians and television pundits. In that sense, holding a Trump-Putin summit in Alaska is a victory for hard-right Russian nationalists. 'Across the board, it's considered a major win,' Davis said. This article originally appeared in
Times of Oman
10 hours ago
- Times of Oman
Trump admits he and Putin did not reach key agreements
During the leaders' joint press conference in Alaska, US President Donald Trump did not offer much more insight into how his talks with President Vladimir Putin over Russia's war in Ukraine went. Trump said that, although the meeting was "productive," there were a few points on which the two sides could not agree. "Some of the points are not so significant and one is very significant," Trump told a press conference at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. "There are a couple of big ones that we haven't quite got there on, but we've made some headway." Talking about his next steps, Trump added: "I will call up NATO, the various people I think are important, and of course President Zelenskyy, and tell him about the meeting." At the end of the press conference, during which no questions were allowed, Trump said that a resolution to end the war would come soon and added, "There are thousands of people being killed every day, and I know everyone wants that to stop. I know President Putin wants that to stop."US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have both left Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, with Air Force One departing a minute after Putin's plane. The talks between the two leaders ended after only two-and-a-half hours, with many having expected discussions to stretch to six-seven hours. Seemingly little progress was made during the talks over bringing an end to Russia's war in Ukraine. Trump used the presidents' joint press conference to admit that there were a "few points we could not agree on." 'There was a real lack of meaningful outcomes' The world was watching — and saw nothing but a very uncomfortable US President and his Russian counterpart taking over the room, according to DW's Washington Bureau Chief Ines Pohl. Trump and Putin ended their highly anticipated meeting, and it seemed to yield very little of substance. There was a real lack of meaningful outcomes, with no concrete agreements on key issues like security guarantees for Ukraine or a potential ceasefire, leaving many of us skeptical about any real progress. It felt like Putin managed to control the narrative, achieving a symbolic victory just by being there, while Trump's hesitant demeanor allowed Putin to overshadow him, which was surprising given Trump's usual flair for the dramatic. There are also growing concerns about the long-term implications for European security. This situation feels eerily reminiscent of past negotiations that ignored local voices, raising fears that Ukraine's interests could be sidelined in favor of a deal that benefits both the US and Russia. Moving forward, it's crucial for Trump to team up with NATO allies and put pressure on Putin for a ceasefire to ensure some level of stability.
